Digital Only Subscription
Read the digital e-Edition of The Republican Herald on your PC or mobile device, and have 24/7 access to breaking news, local sports, contests, and more at republicanherald.com or on our mobile apps.

Article Tools

Diane Machen, a criminalist with the Washoe County (Nevada) Sheriff's Office, holds samples of bath salts and synthetic cannabinoids March 15.

One Scranton man stabbed a priest, another jumped out of a third-story window fleeing from someone who did not exist and a West Pittston couple tore through their home's walls trying to stab imaginary people.

All of them, authorities said, did so for the same reason: They were high on bath salts.

A legal substance that mimics methamphetamine, bath salts recently hit the United States by way of Europe, and the substance's intense psychological effects have created a brand new problem for local law enforcement and medical professionals.

"The thing that really stands out is what actual drug users are saying," said Lackawanna County Deputy District Attorney Robert Klein. "People who are used to taking heroin and ecstasy and cocaine ... they're telling us this is just bad, bad stuff."

Already infamous in Europe when they made their way to the U.S. early last year, bath salts can be purchased legally in most of the country, most often in smoke shops and on the Internet.

"Anybody who's a chemist can make them," said Barbara Carreno, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

The chemicals found in bath salts - most often 4-methylmethcathinone (mephedrone) or methylenedioxypyrovalerone, or MDPV - originate in the Middle East, Asia and West Africa, Carreno said.

While neither of the substances are controlled by the DEA, mephedrone is considered an analog of methcathinone, a schedule I controlled substance.

Therefore, cases involving mephedrone can be prosecuted under the Federal Analog Act of the Controlled Substances Act, which allows substances with a chemical structure substantially similar to the chemical structure of a schedule I or II drug to be treated as a schedule I drug if they are intended for human consumption.

While state legislatures can pass laws to ban a particular substance - as Pennsylvania lawmakers are in the process of doing - the process by which the DEA controls a substance involves a much more rigorous analysis.

"We have to justify our actions." Carreno said. "When we control something, it takes it off the market and that's not something you do willy-nilly. You have to demonstrate that there's a problem."

The danger of bath salts is in part caused by the relative scarcity of research into the chemicals they contain and their production, which is not standardized, and appears to be being performed by "amateurs," said Dr. Joseph Lee.

"These aren't like medical laboratories; these are people trying to make money," said Lee, a spokesman for the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and medical director of the Hazelden Center for Youth and Families in Plymouth, Minn.

There may not be a call every day, Graziano said, but there are usually around 10 calls a week.

Most often, individuals high on bath salts will call police to report instances of stalking, Graziano said.

An individual high on bath salts recently called police to report two men standing across the street from his home who he believed posed a threat to him.

"There was nobody there, but he's actively seeing them," Capt. Graziano said. "It's hard to tell them that it's not there when they're seeing it."

On multiple occasions, bath salts users have barricaded themselves inside their homes, sometimes with weapons and other individuals inside.

In such cases, the department's Special Operations Group is brought in to diffuse the situation, Graziano said. So far, those incidents have all ended peacefully, he said.

"Nevertheless, it could've went the other way," he said.

But hallucinations can cause trouble outside the mind of the bath salts user.

"Here's the problem: if a user's high on bath salts and starts freaking out in public, everyone's in danger," Klein said. "We don't know what that hallucination is, and if that hallucination says I'm some big, green, three-headed monster, they're going to do anything to get rid of me."

Dr. Steve Brunetti, an emergency room doctor at Community Medical Center, Scranton said that between February and March the center took in about a dozen patients suffering from symptoms related to bath salts use.

"It's very similar - not as intense - to a PCP overdose, and very similar to severe cocaine toxicity," Brunetti said.

As with PCP, Brunetti said that bath salts can increase a person's pain tolerance "which appears to be super strength sometimes because nothing seems to stop them."

In February, Scranton Police Cpl. Thomas McDonald and Officer Robert Hegedus deployed stun guns on Michael Campagna, 29, of Scranton, four times during a chase.

His only reactions were to pull the prongs out of his flesh and try to bat the device away when the officers were close enough, Cpl. McDonald said.

Campagna was later found to have cocaine and alcohol in his system after a blood test at Community Medical Center, but a doctor at the hospital also told Cpl. McDonald that Campagna's vital signs appeared consistent with bath salt use.

When treating a patient under the influence of bath salts, Brunetti said doctors first rule out any other cause. Then, for lack of definitive testing, they rely on a patient's history as provided by witnesses or police in order to make a "presumptive diagnosis" of bath salts use.

Doctors' only recourse is to then sedate the patient to alleviate their symptoms in the hopes that once they come out of sedation the symptoms will cease, Brunetti said.

"Outside of that, there's really no antidote," Brunetti said. "It just has to run through their system."

As for long-term effects, bath salts' similarity to methamphetamine have led Lee to believe that damage to neurotransmitters in the brain could cause mental health problems, particularly psychosis.

Moreover, Lee said, bath salts are "definitely addictive" because they work like drugs that are known to be addictive like methamphetamine and cocaine.

When he allegedly stabbed the Rev. Francis Landry in the St. Ann's Basilica Monastery on March 9, Ryan Foley, 25, 1316 Cornell St., was in the midst of a multiple-day bath salt binge, according to police.

"That's exactly what you would expect from an amphetamine-type drug," said Dr. Timothy Cannon, director of the University of Scranton's neuroscience program and a professor of psychology.

While the DEA has not labeled MDPV an analog yet, Cannon said it works in the brain as an amphetamine would.

When a person takes amphetamine or an analog, the brain is forced to release an abnormally large amount of norepinephrine and dopamine to the neurotransmitters' receptors, causing increased vigilance, aggression and paranoia and even symptoms of schizophrenia, Dr. Cannon said

"For random people to be taking drugs that encourage paranoia, aggressiveness, vigilance and violence is really a bad idea," Cannon said.

We welcome user discussion on our site, under the following guidelines:

To comment you must first create a profile and sign-in with a verified DISQUS account or social network ID. Sign up here.

Comments in violation of the rules will be denied, and repeat violators will be banned. Please help police the community by flagging offensive comments for our moderators to review. By posting a comment, you agree to our full terms and conditions. Click here to read terms and conditions.